Ten million colors plus me

...a dispatch from bewilderness

In my first life, I talked like a person and wrote like one, too. In complete sentences. Even complete paragraphs that unfurled in words that made sense. Then the world cracked open in billions of pieces and I wasn’t in it. Then everything else turned into billions of pieces. Billions of pieces no one could put together again.

My brain was like a lightbulb with a short in it. Like your world cracked open into billions of pieces and you weren't in it and it wasn't your world and you weren't you and couldn't be you ever again

One doctor said I was impaired. Another doctor said I was too impaired to be repaired. I would never write again. I would never work again. I would never write a book. I would never teach anything to anyone. I might never say anything anyone would want to hear.

It was like every phone, every cell tower, every radio station, every TV station, every streamer, every satellite, every plane, every train, every automobile in any location was down. Down, out, done. Like I had been photoshopped out of the frame. Any frame anywhere. Left with no voice. No choice.

The “me” in “me” was gone. Someone else was in her place. Someone else who had my face. “I” had no voice. “I” had no choice. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, humans can distinguish approximately 10 million colors. That’s thanks to the cone cells in your retina, the back part of your eye that senses light and sends signals to your brain. If your brain is fine.

Nineteen years post-truck, the editor at a major publication told me the piece I submitted to him was “lovely.” This happened yesterday. He added, “it really sparkled.” And then? Then he rejected it. For being not just “lovely” and “sparkling,” but for being “too literary,” too.